Archive for January, 2014

On Wednesday, January 29, 2:00 to 3:00 pm, the NAHSL CE committee is sponsoring a webinar on how librarians can become involved with their hospital’s quality improvement staff in carrying out a Failure Mode and Effects Analysis. Our information- and knowledge-management skills are valuable in this process. The class will give a practical introduction to the steps of FMEA, and point out how our skills can improve specific steps.

Registration is through Wild Apricot, and MLA credit has now been confirmed. Registration fee is $15 for NAHSL members.

Online registration http://www.mlanet.org/am/am2014/register/index.html is now open for MLA’s 2014 Annual Meeting and Exhibition. Join your
colleagues to address changing trends in health care and be energized with new ideas for building your information future.

Requests for Informal Meeting Space Due February 7: To request informal meeting space for your chapter, affiliated nonprofit
group, or other organization during MLA ’14, use the meeting space application http://mla14.heiexhibitors.com/MLA14-Meeting-Space-Application
Meeting space is limited and assigned on a first-come, first-served basis.

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has created a new tool to “asses the understandability and actionability of print and audiovisual patient education materials”, entitled the Patient Education Materials Assessment Tool (or PEMAT). Patient education materials such as brochures and other aids are often complex and difficult for patients to understand, especially across various healthcare providers. This tool is designed to help health care providers, health librarians, and other health professionals in charge of providing materials to consumers evaluate their print and audiovisual materials. If the materials meet a certain score, then most patients and consumers should be able to understand these materials and act on the information provided.

The AHRQ website includes the instrument that can be used for both print and audiovisual materials, as well as a user guide and instructions on scoring.

PubMed Commons, a new feature of PubMed which allows commenting on articles, is now live. All authors of publications cited in PubMed are eligible to participate. They can comment on any article in PubMed, rate the helpfulness of comments, and invite other authors cited in PubMed to join. Links to other articles can be embedded in the comments, using a PubMed ID number. You can also set up alerts for articles with comments using your MyNCBI account. Those who are not authors can still view the comments on articles, and there is a new filter available called Reader Comments, which can be applied to search results. It’s also possible to view all the comments in PubMed (433 at this writing): Find all PubMed Citations with comments. We hope that PubMed Commons will lead to open communication and enhance the scholarly record. To participate, see How to Join PubMed Commons. Follow PubMed Commons on Twitter, and read the PubMed Commons blog for additional information.